Jason Allen(II)

Jason Allen was born in San Diego, California & raised in Tucson, Arizona then moved to Bismarck, North Dakota at age 16, where he lived for three formative years. After graduating from Century High School in 1997, he took off for Los Angeles and enrolled in the UCLA Short Fiction Film Program, where he wrote & directed The Lift (2000), one of the six selected films in the program to premiere at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Theater. Jason has gone on to be an intricate part of many ambitious-challenging feature films, award-winning short films, television and on-demand episodic series, countless promotional, commercial & music video productions as the first assistant director, producer and editor.

His reputation as the first assistant director (member of the Director's Guild of America since 2011) on a production staff has proven invaluable to a number of independent feature films including recently completed Life Support directed by Larry Clark (starring Brian Dennehy, Leslie Ann Warren, J.K. Simmons, David Koechner & Mike O'Malley), Deep Murder directed by Nick Corirossi (starring Christopher McDonald, Katie Aselton, Chris Redd, Stephanie Drake & Jerry O'Connell), Ray Meets Helen directed by Alan Rudolph (starring Kieth Carradine, Sondra Locke, Samantha Mathis, Jennifer Tilly, Kieth David & Kim Waynes), Andover (starring Jonathan Silverman, Jennifer Finnigan, Scout Taylor-Compton, Richard Kind, Beth Grant, Richard Portnow & Angela Kinsey), Gehenna: Where Death Lives shot on the island of Saipan, Supermoto shot in the Fargo-ND area, Someone Marry Barry (starring Tyler Labine, Lucy Punch, Damon Wayans, Jr. & Ed Helms) and New Mexico-based Blaze You Out (starring Veronica Diaz-Carranza, Melissa Cordero, Q'orianka Kilcher, Mark Adair-Rios, Jeremy Ray Valdez, Elizabeth Pena & Raoul Trujillo)...Improv-comedy A Better You directed by Matt Walsh and The Dark Around The Stars directed by Derrick Borte (starring Mark Kassen, Kathryn Hahn, Tom Bower, Ileana Douglas & Vinessa Shaw). And other notable indie-features; Ten Years Later (starring Jake Hoffman, Rachel Boston & James DeBello), Cosmic Radio (featuring Michael Madsen, Irene Bedard, Wes Studi, Ryder Strong & Seymour Cassel), Ready Or Not (starring Christian Oliver, Seamus Dever, Fernanda Romero, Jonathan Murphy, Evan Helmuth, Alex Rocco & Steve Railsback) and The Last Letter (starring William Forsythe, Yancy Butler & Grace Zabriskie).

As a Producer, Jason took on the challenge of shooting in Kyoto, Japan for the award-winning short film, Chiyo. Along with Masanori Baba (producer, writer & director) and their stellar Japan/USA crew, Jason was also the first assistant director & post-production supervisor for this beautiful and touching film about a 4-year-old girl in 1945 in search of her dead father during O-Bon, the Japanese Festival of the Dead. This earned Allen & Baba the distinction of being semi-finalists in the 2006 Academy Awards for Best Live-Action Short...Chiyo is distributed by Shorts International and available for purchase/download on iTunes.

In the realm of reality television, Jason has been involved with hit shows on The Discovery Channel & Speed Network; Biker Build-Off (associate producer) where motorcycle builder/designers went head-to-head building & racing their bikes, and the 10 episode race car series Setup (associate producer) that narrows down ten drivers for a chance to qualify with the Pontiac Solstice race team.

Additionally, since it's inception in 2013, Jason is proud to be the production director of the Louisiana International Film Festival & Mentorship Program in it's 6th year based in Baton Rouge-LA. He lives & works in Los Angeles-CA, loves his family, traveling & experiencing the world making movies.